‘Late Show’ no more: Late-night TV’s future uncertain as Colbert bows out

It’s almost lights out at “The Late Show,” as Stephen Colbert gets ready to say goodbye this week, and he may not be the last.

CBS’s cancelation of “The Late Show,” first launched in 1993 with original host David Letterman, marks the latest shrinking of the late-night TV landscape, which has become increasingly political in the Trump era. And other hosts are wondering aloud if they could soon be joining Colbert in a chorus of swan songs.

The actor and comedian is poised to end his more than a decadelong run as the face of “The Late Show” as the show takes its final bow on Thursday.

“I think of Johnny Carson’s final week. I think of Jay Leno’s first week. I think of David Letterman, his last NBC week and his first CBS week,” Kliph Nesteroff, a standup comic and author of “The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy,” said of Colbert’s last hurrah.

“I think of all those monumental moments that have entered the canon of late-night history, and this sort of feels like it belongs with those,” Nesteroff said.

“It feels like it has the magnitude of what late-night had in the 1990s, despite the fact that it’s coming about for a far more political and bizarre reason.”

The finale of “The Late Show” comes roughly 10 months after CBS, in a stunning move, announced it was pulling the plug on the late-night TV franchise.

“This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late-night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” the network said at the time.

But the decision to oust Colbert, one of President Trump’s fiercest late-night critics, drew scrutiny and some backlash. The move came amid a multibillion-dollar merger effort by CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, with entertainment giant Skydance.

The merger was ultimately approved by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, forming Paramount Skydance.

Trump celebrated CBS giving Colbert the axe, writing on social media, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired.”

Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, said Colbert has been part of a generation of comedians “who have become much more aggressive and critical in their mockery of politics.”

“We’ve been on a steady trajectory........

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